Ruhr Region Gets Ravers
June 21, 2007
Berlin is off the map for the Love Parade this year as the event's organizers and local officials agreed on Thursday to relocate the popular techno street party to Germany's Ruhr region.
After dancing down the streets of Essen on Aug. 25 this year, ravers can continue the party in Dortmund, Bochum, Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen in consecutive years. The region of 5.3 million inhabitants competed against around 60 cities, including Barcelona, St. Petersburg and Munich, to win the contract.
The Love Parade is expected to attract over a million visitors to the region and 120 million euros ($161 million). Its organizers will foot the bill of roughly three million euros for the street party.
"That this event will take place here is an expression of the region's liveliness," said Essen Mayor Wolfgang Reininger.
Hard to host a party
The Love Parade began in Berlin in 1989, and at its peak, in 1999, drew 1.5 million partygoers who danced to the techno beats blaring from floats on their route through the city's central Tiergarten park.
Disagreements among the organizers, financial problems and conflicts with the city over park damage and waste disposal led to a two-year break for the parade, which resumed in Berlin in 2006. But the city senate and the organizers were unable to bridge their differences, so the latter started looking for a new host.
Essen's police have already raised concerns about safety during the party.
"The Love Parade in Berlin was held along a green belt, where there was plenty of space for people to evacuate if there was an emergency," said Ulrich Fassbender of the city police. "But things are different here in Essen. We have some four-lane roads along the route, but if you imagine a crowd of 700,000, it's clear that they'll be very crowded. If panic breaks out for some reason, there's not much room for people to escape quickly."